


Five Women Elizabeth Weir Has Loved

by Medie



Category: Stargate Atlantis
Genre: F/F
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2010-02-22
Updated: 2010-02-22
Packaged: 2017-10-07 11:44:29
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,552
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/64844
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Medie/pseuds/Medie
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
      <p>written for <a href="http://havocthecat.livejournal.com/profile"><img/></a><a href="http://havocthecat.livejournal.com/"><b>havocthecat</b></a> and the <a href="http://medie.livejournal.com/1276621.html">Five Things Meme, Redux</a></p>
    </blockquote>





	Five Women Elizabeth Weir Has Loved

**Author's Note:**

> written for [](http://havocthecat.livejournal.com/profile)[**havocthecat**](http://havocthecat.livejournal.com/) and the [Five Things Meme, Redux](http://medie.livejournal.com/1276621.html)

5.

Elizabeth is fresh out of college, up to her eyeballs in debt, and seriously reconsidering her choice to go it alone when she meets Kerry. Maxed out on her credit cards, living on Ramen noodles, and loving every second of it, Kerry's exactly what Elizabeth needs. They get a place together, a little hole in the wall that's barely big enough to turn around in. It's the happiest Elizabeth's been in a while and, eventually she finds a job working for a senator friend of her mother's while Kerry gets hired by the State Department as an intern. They spend their Friday nights in front of the television with cheesy reruns of McMillan &amp; Wife, eating pizza, and drinking wine.

When she looks back on that time, she knows it was inevitable to fall in love.

Sometimes, when she wakes up in Atlantis, with the rain falling outside and the edge of her small bed jabbing her hip, Elizabeth can almost feel Kerry pressed up behind her. It's difficult not to reach for a hand she knows isn't going to be there.

4.

She sprains her ankle at a conference; nearly taking an ungainly tumble down an escalator. It takes very undignified arm pin-wheeling to keep from killing herself but Elizabeth laughs it off when people rush to her aid. If you're going to attempt breaking your neck, doing it at a conference guarded by an ordinate amount of military personnel isn't your best choice. Two Marines in full dress gear kneel to pick up her spilled papers while another one helps Elizabeth up.

It's not until she's leaned against him, favoring her ankle that she realizes they were someone else's escort and that someone is knelt at her feet, gently probing her ankle.

She ends up buying Janet coffee, bad coffee from the vending machine at the hospital where she gets her ankle x-rayed, and Janet buys her dinner, Chinese food from down the street. Somewhere between the Dim Sum and the fortune cookies, Elizabeth realizes Janet is the keynote speaker from the conference and that she's blown off the engagement to play doctor.

When she asks, Janet laughs and shrugs. "You did me a favor," she assures. "Much of my work at the moment is so classified, if I even _hint_ at it -- " She looks annoyed. "I told my superiors it would be a waste of time."

"Not entirely," Elizabeth says.

When Janet looks up and sees the look in her eyes, Elizabeth smiles.

She buys breakfast. Janet gets it the next time.

When Vice President Kinsey dumps the SGC files on her, Elizabeth finds the report halfway through her reading. She doesn't even read it all, dropping it in the middle of the floor and retreating to the shower to cry.

The water runs cold before she comes back out, gets herself a glass of wine, and sits down to finish reading.

3.

In retrospect, Elizabeth believes it a miracle that she never found out about the SGC until Kinsey's power play. The names of too many friends are scattered through out its history, friends she's still in contact with. While she understands secrecy, it's still amazing that there's never been even a hint, particularly when one considers the rather abysmal cover story. Deep Space Radar indeed.

She met Dara Williams in the aftermath of the Rwandan genocide, the Navy lawyer a kindred spirit, she's surprised to find her name on the active duty roster. At least, that is, until she reads the assignment.

"Diplomatic unit?" She cocks a brow at the freckle faced redhead over the plate of hot wings they're splitting. "You?"

Dara grins, picking the label off of her beer bottle. "Well, they needed somebody, I was bored, and they promised me a hell of a ride." She leans forward, resting her forearms on the chipped and battered table. "O'Neill alone keeps that promise in spades."

"It's probably who he was thinking of when he said it," Elizabeth nods. She hasn't been at the Mountain long, but long enough to get a personal understanding of the headaches Jack O'Neill can cause.

"If I had a nickel for every time I've been shot at because of that man," Dara shakes her head. "My people spend _way_ too much time talking his ass out of trouble. Between him and Jackson, good god, I don't know why they let those two through the damn gate."

"Well, it keeps you in business." Elizabeth steals Dara's beer even though she's not fond of it. The wings at the bar are "steal your breath" hot.

"I could do with a little less business." Dara assures dryly. "The only unit that gets shot at more than mine is _his_." She takes back her beer. "He stirs up the locals, they try and kill us off, it's practically tradition." She grins cheekily. "If you want, you can give him a lecture or two on the subject. Invoke the 'you can't get my ex killed' clause."

"We never dated," Elizabeth says absently.

Dara sighs. "Not for my lack of trying."

"I was involved," Elizabeth says, "I'm not now."

It takes a second but Dara catches on, a grin stealing over her face. They get the wings to go and Elizabeth wakes up to that grin every morning until she leaves for McMurdo. Dara turns down Atlantis, Elizabeth doesn't blame her. Dara's got her work with the Jaffa, Elizabeth has her city, neither one of them can begrudge the other her dreams.

 

2.

The IOA is all over Atlantis mission, even before Daniel Jackson figures out the address. Elizabeth starts avoiding their calls three days after she arrives in the Antarctic, knowing even attempting to listen would be pointless. Countries squabbling with countries over percieved control of the mission, others protesting the American domination of the mission. There is no answer that will satisfy all of them, if any of them, and Elizabeth contents herself with leaving them to their bickering.

There was always a chance that one of them would come looking, but that doesn't stop her from being surprised when Rodney pulls a slender blonde into the office one afternoon.

"Elizabeth," he says perfunctorially. "Meet Ambassador MacKenzie. Ambassador, this is Elizabeth Weir. Now if you two will excuse me, I've got a skittish Scotsman and a Lazyboy with ambition to attend to."

The Ambassador watches him go with a wry grin. "Believe it or not, he's actually a bit of a rockstar on the Hill."

"There's no accounting for taste," Elizabeth says and they laugh.

Somewhere along the line, after that, Ambassador MacKenzie stops being Ambassador MacKenzie and starts being Hannah. It's a gradual process over late night meetings that are more dinner than meeting where Elizabeth vents while Hannah nods. The process of selecting personnel for a mission which may, or may not, happen is maddening enough without the IOA mucking the process up. Laughing, they plan, scheme, and joke about various ways to dispose of, or neutralize, the committee.

The night Hannah kisses her, Elizabeth blinks in surprise and smiles. "Would this be your way of ensuring Canada's interests?"

Hannah laughs, nuzzling into the fingers that slide over her cheek as Elizabeth explores. "If it's not working then I wouldn't hear of it...is it?"

Elizabeth's smile turns wicked. "I'll let you know."

It's six months before she can look at a Canadian flag without blushing.

1.

The expedition is still in its infancy when Elizabeth mentally apologizes to every general who's ever run the SGC. They made their mistakes and for all her insistence she wouldn't repeat them, the Pegasus galaxy is swift and merciless in teaching her otherwise. With every casualty, botched mission, and near miss that she faces, Elizabeth understands more and more just what kind of challenge they were juggling.

Hers isn't so different from theirs. She doesn't seek Kate Heightmeyer out in a professional capacity but circumstances keep throwing them together anyway. Hours spent standing over mission reports and psychiatric evaluations create a natural intimacy that's difficult to ignore.

"Elizabeth," Kate laughs one day, "you can talk to me when I'm off the clock. I don't mind." She smiles. "You certainly won't when I am."

And she doesn't. It's purely her own issue but Elizabeth decides against speaking with Kate fairly early on. She's head of the mission and she needs to maintain her distance even if only on paper. After Kate's comment, they meet for dinner almost weekly and just talk.

It isn't until Elizabeth sees the hive ships heading for Atlantis that it turns to more.

Three days after Daedalus arrives in the nick of time and they're in bed, Kate's fingers are combing through her hair, stroking her scalp, and Elizabeth's slowly losing the fight to stay awake. Her body still sated and lazy from sex and dinner, she thinks she's lucky to have lasted this long.

"We'll be going back to Earth for a while," she says quietly. "The SGC wants to talk."

"Better you than me." Kate chuckles.

Elizabeth pinches her, light and playful, just to hear her squeal. "I'll be gone quite a while. Replenishing, debriefings, who knows what else."

"The bed will be warm when you get back."

She hears the message in Kate's words and she smiles.


End file.
